Deludia

But, it's just not common

Getting ready to go to Seattle I presented myself out to the Spokane VA to get my travel information and mileage payment for gas. The VA is required to pay for your trip if you’re medical issues are 100% service connected. This trip was ordered by my oncologist at the Spokane VA because Spokane has no oncology radiation facilities. In my previous trips I would go to the travel office, they would check my record to see where I was going, and then either give me an airplane ticket or a voucher to take to the cashier to get the gas money for the trip.

This time I was told that they weren’t going to do that. Because I was being sent to Seattle, I had to collect the money to go –after I got there.

In its infinite wisdom, the VA has created a new policy that leaves the veteran to find his or her own way to get the medical care that law requires the VA to pay. In my case, that’s about $150 each way for a total of $300.

We vets who live on a VA disability pension can’t just come up with $300 out of nowhere and then wait until after we return to get a reimbursement mailed to us. We live from check to check, carefully counting our pennies to make it from one month to the next.

I may have to abort this trip, regardless that my oncologist says it’s important and even life-saving to go. The purpose of the radiation is twofold; first it is to relieve the pain from bone deterioration in my spine that often is severe. The second is that the radiation will cause the bone to become harder, reducing the chance that the spinal disks will collapse under the weight of my own body and head.

But the VA’s new policy places an unexpected and large financial burden on me that I’m not sure I can withstand. Had I known about the change in policy I could have had the opportunity to change what bills I paid immediately in order to use the money for travel, and use the reimbursement to pay the bill. As it is, I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go, as the old song says.

I really don’t understand why it is that Seattle becomes responsible for providing travel arrangements and fund disbursement. I was referred there by the Spokane VA. So it seems to me that the Spokane VA should, as it has always in the past, be responsible for the travel. They ordered it.

I had saved up for food for the trip. The VA provides lodging but what we eat is up to us. So if I go, I will have to use the food money to pay for the trip, leaving me nothing to eat on.

More and more VA policies are changing and it’s very obvious that those people making the changes have neither any understanding of or regard for the veterans they’re supposed to be serving. Their policies have become do convoluted and their resources so tight that it leaves a lot of veterans despondent. This is reflected in the terribly high incidence of veteran suicides. Rather than adjust their policies to better serve veterans, they’ve instead stepped up referrals to the national suicide helpline. As if that’s going to help anything.

When I became despondent a while back, convinced I was dying anyway, I was looking for a doctor to help me perish. I wasn’t one bit interested in listening to someone who didn’t know me and knew nothing of my situation issue platitudes and pleadings with me to change my mind.

If the VA is interested in caring for veterans, which is supposed to be their whole purpose, then perhaps they should give some thought to actually helping veterans. Their record with me is worse than abysmal ranging from incompetent medical procedures that did more damage than help, nearly killing me twice with their treatments, making me wait 3 months to get glasses only to find they were wrong when they arrived, and a whole laundry list of other unacceptable errors and oversights.

Now I have to contemplate just skipping the trip until I can afford to go, and take the burden that belongs to the VA onto my own shoulders. I’m not particularly motivated to go anymore so I may just tell the VA to keep their treatments and go on the way I have been. On my own. One would think that a little common sense would reveal the ridiculous nature of their policies. But as they say, common sense isn’t common.

That’s where the VA’s so called “best care anywhere” has left me.